Anonymous

I was first scouted at the age of 14 by one of the world's most prestigious model agencies. I was told that my life had now changed and had to be perfect: bikini waxes, leg waxes, lots of water, perfect skin and having to stay slim were all on the agenda. I had just about started my period by then. When I put on seven pounds to become a whopping seven and a half stone, it was commented on before I'd made it halfway through the office.

I did my first topless shoot a year later for a well-known photographer, and they were photographs that oozed sex. They will tell you that it wouldn't happen in the UK, that it's illegal; I would ask you not to be naive. My father shuddered and wept when he saw them in my model book by accident. He wanted nothing to do with it ever again. I quit modelling at 18 and went to university, tired of seeing my 15 and 16-year-old colleagues on Vogue front pages looking like they were all about sex, while overhearing men saying things I couldn't repeat about girls I knew to be still awkward about kissing boys.

As far as I'm concerned we drape paedophilic images from every billboard and expensive magazine. Quite simply a lot of these girls are under 18 and they're made to look "sexy", "hot". These pictures are usually celebrated as high-end culture and something for young girls and women to aspire to. The sexualisation of girls in our culture is rampant and violently damaging, as well as a massive waste of energy and time for girls and women. Isn't it about time that we stopped focusing so much on girls' bodies and outfits and started celebrating their minds and skills?

In the week in which the inventor of Spanx made this year's world's billionaires list, I flick back through my journal to when, four years ago and aged 15, I described hoisting my own thighs into a pair of the sausage-skin underwear for my school fashion show. "Hyper-sexualisation" sounds like a stern gynaecologist's description of orgasm and I am hesitant to use it to describe the uneasy feeling I get when I remember my early adolescence, but by 15 I had indeed sexed up my look, perfected a vacuous doe-eyed pout and enslaved myself to the hair-straightener. I am not ashamed of this; nor do I condemn any woman who chooses to flash more than just ankle or curl her eyelashes or paint her nails.

But I am ashamed that I did not question the very notion of sexualisation, that I succumbed to the male gaze so young. Aged 15 I did not realise that stilettos made my feet mimic the shape of a woman's foot in climax. I did not know that my red lipstick resembled the flush of aroused labia. I did not wonder who I was supposed to be pleasing – my male maths partner or myself? My feminism leads me to think that a woman is entirely free to wear whatever she wants: she can show off her legs Monday and wear a turtleneck Tuesday. Nevertheless, it also leads me to think that "choice" must really be free, and that freedom is rarely felt at 15 when your circulation is being cut off by polyester control pants and your fake eyelashes are jabbing your corneas out.

The sexualisation of young girls is an unfortunate by-product of a modern, western society in which the gulf between the sexes is inexplicably widening. Any efforts to stop this should be welcomed. I have three children, aged three, two and three months. They are a girl, a boy and a girl respectively, and my husband and I have tried, from their births, to bring our two girls and their brother up in an environment that treats them as equals. Despite all efforts, we already feel thwarted by the subtle but incessant drip-feed of sexism that comes not just from books, TV, playgroups and health visitors, but also from family and friends towards our kids. My oldest daughter loves her princess dress, dolls and necklaces because they were gifts to her (my son is the same with his trucks and trains). I know that people find our discomfort extreme – after all, these are generous gifts – and we are much more restrictive than we'd like to be, in order to provide a balance.

A friend who works for a major British clothes designer recently suggested our oldest daughter could model for them. Our initial excitement died down as we realised that this would be an early endorsement of being admired for how she looks, rather than what she does. She already, at only three, asks for her nails to be painted and hair to be styled. These are the things she is routinely "praised" for and she naturally wants to please. We do what we can to stem the flow, but it wouldn't completely surprise me if she got lingerie for her fourth birthday.

You cannot mention the hyper sexualisation of the media without the f-word – feminism. Particularly feminism and its gaping plot holes. At 17, I find that the critics of hyper-sexualisation often mention the 90s as a golden era: "Oh, we all wore Doc Martens, no makeup and naff clothes and it didn't matter". Well to paraphrase Kanye West, I'mma let you reminisce about that, but the 90s also brought us third-wave feminism, which allowed us to descend into this vacuous regressive hyper-sexuality. It started with the Spice Girls and Sex and the City and left us having genuine debates on whether vajazzling is a tool of the patriarchy.

It's no coincidence that this topic is brought up while the word feminism is mainly consigned to the blogosphere's murky backwaters: it's an ideology that's dithered, leaving us thinking someone like pop star Rihanna is a "modern-day feminist" because she dresses sexy and doesn't take orders from anyone (thanks for that, Cosmopolitan).

Yes, there is the argument that parents set the tone, but as a teenager you actively seek the opinions of your peers too … and if your peers are huddled around More magazine's favourite sexual positions of the week re-enacted by Barbie dolls, you're told to go for the ride because, to quote Gretchen Wieners in Mean Girls: "That's just, like, the rules of feminism!"